Customer Reviews

SNMP, SNMPv2, SNMPv3, and RMON 1 and 2 (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought the book because it has good reviews. I do not agree with the good reviews. I have read the book back to back, and I feel that the author has made the subject more difficult. It is a typical approach where less amount of material is beaten up again and again. I am an advanced developer in SNMP and related topics. I think that the author wants to make the book more difficult to read because he wants the readers to think that it is thorough. It is not a simple book to understand, especially if you want to implement SNMP on systems. A more direct approach is required and I would welcome a book which makes things more simple. Organisation of the book is also not very good. I'd really not advise people to buy this book, if they find any other

I had been searching the web and other printed text on SNMP network management and found that most do not go into enough detail or the explanations are very vague. If I had picked up William Stalling's book 6 months ago, I would have saved myself a lot of time. If you decide to get a book on SNMP network management, make it this one. It is very comprehensive. Discusses and provides in-depth information on all topics relating to SNMP network management written in a clear and easy to read style. This book is essential for both students and working professionals, thanks to William Stallings.

Ten years ago I thought that William Stallings was a good author.

However, technical writing has moved forward since then or at least I have read a lot more technical books, and when given the choice of a Stallings book or a book by another author, I would check out the other author first.

Mr Stallings is something of an interpreter of incomprehensible standards documents, a high priest of hi-tech. Unfortunately his style is not very accessible, as though he is keen to maintain a certain element of mystique and maintain an intellectual distance from the unititiated.

For me, he is on the wrong side of the balance between technical stringency and accessibility.

For anyone who wants to use SNMP rather create SNMP software, it helps to break off from discussions of entities, instances, objects, vectors and the finers point of Abstract Syntax Notation to give some meaningful concrete examples with words like WAN link, packet, error etc. Mr Stallings is much more comfortable with the abstact than I am as befits a man who reads IEEE specifications but he needs to remember that he is preaching to more practical simple-minded types who like to talk about "relatively" tangible and familiar things.

I think the guys who rate this book highly are programmers who already knew about SNMP before buying the book and who use the book as a reference. As a network admin who wants to use SNMP to manage my network, I can say that I would buy this book with my company's money but not mine.

The sections on SNMP are helpful, but if your looking for RMON info you should pass on this book. The author basically copies the RFC's verbatim and offers no more insight than the descriptions found in the Mibs themselves.

Before buying this book my major objective was to 1. Learn about SNMP basics, 2. Learn about MIB and some advanced concepts of SNMP like interaction of the SNMP manager with the agent. 3. Learn programming techniques of SNMP. 4. See how MIB,agent,device,NMS all interact together.

I feel that this book has not satisfied the above 4 points. In fact this book is not for beginners. If you are new to Network management and want to learn about SNMP the defacto standard of network management, then this book is not advisable. This books talks pretty much at a higher level about concepts rather than talking about the SNMP basics and then guiding u thro higher concepts.

If u r looking for good SNMP material, the net is the good reference. Goto (...) and search for MIB,SNMP etc and then u r certain to hit very good pages.

The book "Snmp, Snmpv2, Snmpv3 and Rmon 1 and 2" describes network management with the SNMP protocol. The first part introduces the reader to network management fundamentals and the rest of the book deals with SNMP and RMON. It covers the history of SNMP, the standard MIB, the management information, the protocols and the security models (v3).

The book is quite comprehensive and covers all relevant aspects of SNMP (and then some). The chapters are ordered chronologically, the text can thus be read from front to back, starting with the simple assumptions and basic operations of v1, leading to the more complex issues of the v3 security model.

There are quite some problematic aspects to this text. I had a hard time reading it, as some of the concepts are not explained very well and because of a lack of a good overview of SNMP, its protocols and the information model. Some simple concepts are illustrated and described well but in a repetitive manner, and some of the more advanced features of SNMP are not covered well, or are hidden somewhere within a generic section, e.g. table augments. The author also has the tendency to dig into related topics throughout the book, which makes it hard to get the essential information on SNMP while reading the book. It would have probably been better to collect these sections and chapters at the end of the book, e.g. Measurements, Polling Frequencies, all the chapter's appendices.

Some of the chapters are really not needed for a book like this. E.g. the whole chapter on the cryptographic algorithms in SNMPv3. It is very hard to explain cryptography in 20 pages and there are a lot of marvelous books on the subject.

The organization of the book seems to follow the RFCs a little bit too closely.

Overall, this text is a comprehensive description of SNMP, but the structure and the writing style make it quite hard to read.

I can't understand why Mr. Kale cannot see the high value of this book. I have developed SNMP applications for 10 years now (I currently work on an SNMP development toolkit, in a group with one of the authors of the v3 RFCs)--the first edition of this was the first book on SNMP that I read and it's still the most comprehensive. I have five other books on the topic, and this is the one I turn to most often.

If I had a criticism of it, it would be that it's a bit pedantic and its overview of the fundamentals and history of SNMP are a bit heavy, but the use and implementation of all Internet protocols should be rigorous, and those who work their way through the front matter will be better SNMP developers for it. There's been quite enough blatantly improper usage of SNMP already, thanks.

This book is deep down description of all the OIDs and structure of SNMP.
If you want to know how the messages get through (SNMP get and other commands) in a developer's point of view, and you want a full dump of all the leafs and OIDs in the MIB structure, then this book is for you.
If you are a systems administrator looking for a practical way to understand how to use SNMP to manage your network devices, then look elsewhere (Essential SNMP, for instance).

Not so clearly written (or typeset for that matter). It's also somewhat out-of-date ('96).

I refer to it periodically, but find myself reading the RFC documents instead.

Stallings misdescribes the ipNetToMedia table(p. 130, 137). He doesn't mention that it's equivalent to the ARP cache.

I have not read this book from cover to cover, but have read through large sections, and dipped into it for specific reference, and found it excellent for both. Whether you sit in front of a management station and want to know what goes on underneath, want to program SNMP, or just want to know how network management works, it's there. I've both managed networks, and programmed SNMP, and found this an excellent book to extend my understanding of network management.